Board Meeting Minutes — July 2017

In attendance at the meeting were Interim Manager Tao Weilundemo, Dan Hemmelgarn, Curt Wohleber, Kevin Rae, Allen Vaught, Margot McMillen, Boden Lyon, Laird Okie, and Heather O’Connor. Ellen Schlie was also in attendance, arriving late after her work shift. Minutes were taken by Heather O’Connor.

(The meeting began in closed session, during which the minutes of the previous month’s closed session were discussed and approved.)

The meeting was called to order at 7:28 p.m. Tao was welcomed as the new interim manager.

The minutes from the previous month’s meeting were approved by voice vote after a motion by Margot, seconded by Heather and passed by voice vote.

The A/P aging summary and profit & loss statements were reviewed. Allen moved to approve the financial report, Laird seconded the motion, and it passed by voice vote.

The FY 2016 audit is complete and was made available for review by the board; the FSR was submitted to CPB and we are in compliance except for the fundraising target. This target would be approximately $250,000 by the end of the financial year in October. To date at this point in the financial year, we’ve raised approximately $125,000 from fundraising. There was some discussion about the admissibility of various types of donated money, goods, services, etc. for CPB fund status.

Manager’s Report: Jackie Casteel has agreed to come on board as a staff member for 15 hours/week at a rate of $13+ 10% commission on underwriting. The departure of John Betz is leaving some shifts open; his morning shifts are being filled and Daria is substituting for the time on his show The Skeptical Eye.

Michelle and Patrick Neelan are stepping up as volunteers; he has extensive experience as a sound engineer at KBIA.

Joy Rushing is stepping in to go through boxes of old papers, mostly multiple copies of newsletters. She has official forms that get signed by the Board President giving permission to destroy the documents.

Tao addressed the plan to have an all-station meeting once a quarter. During the upcoming meeting there will be an opportunity for attendees to rotate out and record pledge pitches. Programmers are supposed by the by-laws to provide 3 hours of volunteer service unrelated to their show. Engaging the volunteers is a priority. Fundraising messaging is key; points are modernization, resisting the state and federal moves to slash programs that support public and community radio. Missouri Arts Council is included in this.

KanBan volunteer board is something that will be tried out: it’s basically a board with items that need to be done.

Slack Team: Is a way to integrate committees and communicate specific information to the people that need to know it. It will start with the IT people and interested parties; if there’s enough buy-in, it will expand.

The first quarter of 2015 is the last time a report was filed with NPR for streaming. A new app for online streaming will be introduced; it is called Spinitron and it integrates well with the reporting that’s required by NPR. Currently, Radio Free America is on the website and recording all the shows as podcasts.

Fund drive: the plan is to actively call past donors, based on a list generated by Kara of lapsed donors. People who are here to answer phones will be calling when the phones aren’t ringing. Jackie talked to Lance at Flat Branch, and there are 20 $50 gift certificates being made available. A donation of 89.50 gets a KOPN eclipse t-shirt. There was some discussion of having a different set of questions about how many hours a week donors listen; the pledge form is being updated. It might include mentioning that the new Radio Free America app is available on the website. Margot mentioned that we need a promo that informs viewers about the Radio Free America app.

Tao proposed that we have an annual fundraising dinner. He also proposed ceasing the vehicle donation program and replacing it with a legacy donation program, an investment donation program or the like.

The Missouri Arts Council has given us $7000 over the last year, and Tao did the final report for the grant. The amount will be lower next year, due to cuts in the program.

We are signed up for a tech soup account, which enables us as a non-profit to get software, computers and other things for deeply discounted prices.

Google adWords would provide $10,000 per month in promotion, which might be applicable to the CPB fundraising amounts.

Rather than the MARTI, Tao would like to apply for a grant to buy a Comrex, which is far more technologically sophisticated and adaptable to virtually any space and situation. It works over Wifi and doesn’t require direct line of site to Paquin tower to do live remotes.

The transfer to Full Stream is underway but phone service with Socket can’t be severed until some VOIP phones are purchased at a rate of around $200 each for two phones. They are offering several options including tower redundancy (equipment would have to be moved) and a separate guest wifi network to potentially contain a virus or similar.

Tao would like to start the process of ripping the CDs and storing them on a 14 TB hard drive.

The issues with the new CD player have been noted by management. Fixes to the board are under review; it’s believed there’s a digitized copy of the manual somewhere, possibly scanned by Sam Griffin.

Tao has been doing a lot of meeting and greeting in the first weeks. He’s planning on 6 weeks of mostly doing work related to the pledge drive and the next 6 weeks doing station management work.

Committee Reports: Programming Committee: Kevin reported about his ideas for a programmers’ event.

Tao mentioned soliciting people during the all-station meeting and directing them toward Kevin for future plans. He also suggested using the Yahoo group.

The membership and development committee met, discussed helping make calls during the pledge drive, and secured some new underwriting from Orr Street Market.

Dan reported on the GM/ED search committee, the members of which are Sarah Catlin, Allen Vaught, Curt Wohleber, and possibly Dan Hemmelgarn.

Laird moved that the personnel above be approved as the official search committee, Boden seconded and the motion carried via unanimous voice vote.

Jackie discussed the potential for an event or two events and/or an award to honor David. It may involve coordinating something at the Love Your Craft festival that could involve an award ceremony and/or an announcement of a second event that would be more of a party specifically for David.

Dan proposed that we support Jackie moving forward with the planning of this event. Allen seconded the motion, which passed by unanimous voice vote.

Dan also proposed that we incentivize any managerial or underwriting effort that helps us reach the CPB funding goal.

Laird made a motion that we engage Howe and Associates to do our audit, for the rate of $3000. Allen seconded and the motion passed by voice vote. Their projected timeline is 6 weeks, contingent on getting the information they need.

The contract with Full Stream Wireless was signed today. Boden cautioned that the contract does state that they may charge for service calls, and that the VOIP phones have the potential to present issues.

The job descriptions for GM, bookkeeper, and office manager are fairly well defined online.

The issue of bookkeeping services was tabled until the next month’s meeting.